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German army ‘depicted blacks as target practice’
By Kirsten Grieshaber in Berlin
Published: 16 April 2007

A German army instructor has been shown on television ordering a soldier to fire his machine gun while imagining he was in the Bronx facing hostile African Americans.

In New York, the Bronx borough president demanded an apology from the German military and said the clip on German television “indicates that bias and assumptions and racism is alive and well around the world”.

Coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, the video seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany’s conscript army.

The Defence Ministry said the video was shot in July 2006 at barracks in the northern town of Rendsburg and that the army had been aware of it since January.

“We are currently investigating the incident,” an army spokesman said.

The clip shows an instructor and a soldier in camouflage uniforms in a forest. The instructor tells the soldier: “You are in the Bronx. A black van is stopping in front of you. Three African-Americans are getting out and they are insulting your mother … act.”

The soldier fires his machine gun several times and yells an obscenity several times in English.

These men are the products of that great German school system, designed to encourage plurality, tolerance and to prevent the creation of a segmented society:

“In our increasingly wertepluralistischen society the school is the place, where a peaceful dialogue between the different views, values, religions and world views takes place and can social authority in handling other-thinking one be learned. Homeschooling is for Germany therefore no model.”

From the press release in response to the UN’s criticism of Germany’s ban on Home Schooling.

So, this is the product of your philosophy. This is the result of your ‘peaceful dialogue’, between the ‘different views, values, religions and world views’. Once again, the whole world sees you for what you really are and we all see what you really want to protect and promote.